You can now add more types of observations to your groundwater modeling projects:

• Observation Types: the following observation types are now supported
  • Wells/Points: head, concentration
  • Boundary Condition Flow: net volumetric flow exchange between groundwater and a specified boundary condition
  • ZoneBudget Zone Flow: net volumetric flow exchange of groundwater in/out of a specified zone, between a specified zone and another zone or a specified boundary condition type
  • Stream (SFR): stage, depth, outflow, head difference between stream midpoint and associated groundwater cell centroid, flow diverted (diversion segments only ), groundwater head, streambed seepage through the unsaturated zone
  • Lakes (LAK): stage, volume, inflow, outflow

• Visual MODFLOW Flex includes a new model results dashboard to facilitate model calibration and results interpretation:
  • Model Dashboard: model observations and associated model results can be displayed in the new model results dashboard which includes dynamic tabulation and charting of results:
    • Tabulated results: observations and corresponding simulated results are presented in a tabular format with dynamic filtering. Tabulated observations include observation metadata, including time, location, observation group/type, model layer, and conductivity zone so that you can quickly display all the data or limit the view to what is relevant.
    • Charts: simultaneously display one or more charts including:
      • simulated vs observed values to evaluate model calibration/history matching
      • time-series to display and evaluate transient result

    

    • Text Outputs: all observations and associated simulated results are output as tab-separated variable text files for use in both Visual MODFLOW Flex and in external applications.
    • Flooded Cells: Display cells with simulated heads above the top of the model as a flood depth map or as a solid color to facilitate model calibration and interpretation:

    

    • Easily switch the location of subviews in Flex Viewers so that you can customize the layout.

Visual MODFLOW Flex includes the following improvements for working with your models:

• Single Engine Runs: run a secondary model such as transport, particle track, or zone budget simulation without having to rerun your flow model.
• Update Solvers: update your flow model solvers without having to retranslate your whole model
• Copy Property Zones: copy/paste zones from one material property zone type to another so that you can more easily have consistent material zones across property types such as conductivity, storage, and transport parameters
• Default SMS Settings: the default settings for the SMS solver package in MODFLOW-USG have been updated based on recommendations by the author of MODFLOW-USG
• Gage Package: gage package is supported in models using the surface water network workflows for streams (SFR) and lakes (LAK).

Visual MODFLOW Flex includes a new calibration dashboard:

• Conceptual Workflow: Build surface water stream and lake networks in a conceptual model and convert it to numerical models
• Clone Workflow: surface water workflows are copied into applicable runs when editing a grid or cloning a model run

Greater control over your project modeling data:

• Data Operations: data objects use the expression builder, facilitating greater control and flexibility when adjusting data object elevations for surfaces, points, polylines, and polygons.
• Expression Builder functions: added a function called ifgaps() to handle expressions with non-overlapping surfaces – now you can combine surfaces with different extents/scales such as regional and site surfaces using a single expression.
  

• Horizons: are now treated the same as other surfaces: they can be shown in 2D views with control over display settings
• Cell Inspector Feedback: Typing a cell ID in the cell inspector provides (optional) feedback on where the specified cell is located in the active view
• Export more data objects:
  • Grids: shapefile,
  • Output Comparisons: shapefile, contours, and surface
  • Horizons: surfaces
  • Water Table: surface

Improved speed and performance for the following:

• Loading and editing model properties and boundary conditions in larger models
• Using the Cell inspector
• Model Translation

Greater control over your project modeling data:

• Backup your project and related files as a zip file from the Main Menu to archive your project or easily share it with colleagues.

• Generate all grid types from the Model Domain context menu of conceptual models
• Define particles around screens of non-vertical wells in the 3D plane perpendicular to the well stem

The following issues have been addressed:

• Changing numeric values in color ramp settings has no effect
• Improper validation when importing a model that uses the BCF package having inactive cells with 0 thickness causes model runs to fail.
• Pilot Point values not correctly assigned using property values from the model leading to issues with preferred-value Tikhonov regularization
• PEST implementation incorrectly assumed pilot points were present in all layers and was corrected to only assign pilot points to cells/layers in their respective zone.
• ZoneBudget fails to run if Conceptual Model name has leading or trailing spaces
• Flow model translation fails if the SFR workflow schedule/data is empty. Flex will now skip SFR translation in this case.
• Project files grow after each save
• SFR2 Feature layer order and symbology does not persist after closing and reopening the project
• WEL package disables MNW2 translation in some cases
• Error assigning MNW wells to numerical model in certain cases
• Flex fails to create child grids in one-layer grids
• PEST workflow does not create Variograms when some layers do not contain a zone.
• Quality and aspect ratio of exported images from 2D views was incorrect
• DRT package not included in run using Advanced translation settings
• Layer View is corrupted in some cases when viewing T=1 in View Maps step
• Surface Water Workflows are not included in cloned runs present in the original run
• Insufficient validation at translation may lead to LGR models that fail because dry cells propagate to the interface between parent and child grids.
• MODFLOW-SURFACT BCF package translation formatting is incorrect for layers with negative elevations
• Transport run window only reports up to 9999 time steps. The max number of reported time steps for a transport run is now 100,000,000.
• Cannot extract a subgrid if the project has been run previously, but not in the current session
• Importing well objects having measured depths resulting in negative elevations fails
• During transport engine translation, .BTN file does not always honor the ‘Simulation time length’ value entered in MT3DMS translation settings
• When a single 2D sub view is active at the view maps step, the view toolbar buttons may be hidden
• Grid color cannot be changed in Flex 2D subviews
• Export null values in dry cells/inactive cells does not respect user selection
• Error while trying to import UCN files with unknown units
• Error opening constant concentration in standalone viewers
• Error trying to access color settings in certain numerical workflows
• SFR dataset2 is missing cells during translation of model with certain topological configurations